Here are my top tips to eating healthy on a budget:

1. Buy what’s on sale/in season. (Oftentimes, these two correlate.) This may seem obvious, but grocery stores will do a lot to trick you into paying more for similar things. For example, Sean and I were at Publix this weekend. He wanted to get some bell peppers for tempeh tacos. When I looked at the prices, green peppers were $.60 each, while red peppers were almost $2.50 each. Ridiculous! Search out what’s less expensive, and craft your menu for the week around that or substitute in similar items in your meals.

2. Buy grains in bulk. No, you don’t have to go buy a 20# bag of rice. However, if your family (or just you) eats a lot of rice, quinoa, oats, don’t bother buying it in those little “single serve” packets. You’re just paying extra for packaging there. I know the single serve packets are helpful, but if you set aside a few hours when you have a little time off to cook your grain for the week, it’ll be like you have single serve packets, but for a lot less $$! Sean and I have been known to cook a week’s worth of oatmeal in the crockpot on Sundays (add in apples, cinnamon, & a little brown sugar–yum to the max). Then we just reheat with a little almond milk the morning we want it.

Hello, oatmeal. I love you.

3. The freezer is your friend. Let’s pause. Unfortunately, I’m not talking about the Lean Cuisines of our college days. No, I mean it’s ok it buy packs of frozen vegetables and fruits, especially if it’s just you! There’s no way Sean and I can finish a whole head of broccoli, 2 bell peppers, green beans, celery, carrots, etc. in a week. We want variety in our meals, but not at the expense of letting good food go bad. Frozen veggies let you take out what you need for that meal, and put the rest back in the freezer for next week without the risk of throwing money in the trash because it went bad. Likewise, if the fresh version is cheaper, we’ll eat what we can and freeze the rest before it goes bad!

That’s right. Those peas were frozen.

You would have never known had I not told you just now…

4. Know the Clean 15. I’m not here to push an “all-organic” diet on people because I know that can be expensive and out of some people’s range. Some organic ingredients can be hard to find, too, if your grocery doesn’t have a large demand for it. The “Clean 15″ are 15 fruits and veggies from the produce section that don’t need to be organic. You can make entire meals out of just some of these ingredients. Yum!

5. When all else fails, sub in beans. Coming from a vegetarian, this is rich, right? Well, beans are a cheaper alternative to more expensive protein sources (chicken, fish, tofu, etc.). Sometimes Sean and I take conventional recipes and substitute beans for the protein source, like our vegetarian sloppy Joes. Sure, it was a little messy, but that’s the point of a sloppy Joe, right? Instead of ground turkey or beef, we throw black beans into our quesadillas. Don’t balk at the beans. If you’re looking to save money, they’re the ticket in the protein department.

Refried bean quesadillas–looks bad, tastes good.

This isn’t an exhaustive tip to saving money in the grocery store, but it’s some of the tips we’ve used to keep our grocery budget moderate. What tricks & tips do you use to keep your grocery budget low?

Is she really writing about this broken leg thing again? Geez, doesn’t she care about anything else any more? I don’t come here to read whining about injuries that don’t relate to me.

Yes, I’m still writing about my broken leg. I’m sorry. It’s all-consuming right now since I spend a lot of time sitting and thinking about it or struggling with it when I’m trying to do something and drop my crutches or fall over or hurt myself some other way. It’s also easy to fall in the trap since I’m not able to do just regular things as quickly or as easily as I have in the past.

But there are a lot of things that I can do and appreciate, and there is a bright side to the whole broken leg thing.

For example, last night I did Karen in CrossFit. That’s 150 wall balls.

Here’s what wall balls look like:

I did them seated with one leg–and I’m pretty sure it was WAY harder than being able to use two legs. It took me 14:38 to finish. I was the last one working, but I did it.

I was planning on stopping at 75, but I noticed a lot more people (uninjured) were still working. So I figured I’d just continue until I couldn’t or until everyone else was finished. I was at 121 by the time the last person finished, so the coach told me to just keep on going since I was so close to 150. It was not easy. I used a 12# ball, but my elbows are a little worse for the wear this morning.

During a normal “wall ball,” your squat as you catch it, which distributes the weight of the catch throughout your whole body. When you can’t squat down with the catch to distribute the blow, it makes the wall ball much more difficult (in my opinion).

My new “cast off” date is supposed to be June 26. I say “supposed” to be because we all know what happened last time. Hopefully, I’ll be running again by the fall, so I can participate in the annual “Run Like Hell” at the Oakland Cemetery. Maybe I’ll start crafting my costume early since I have all this time on my hands.

I turned into a whiny 5-year old and said something about how I brought my boot and it’s just down in the car. He said that he thought the boot was too risky still and that there was a 50/50 chance. He didn’t say what it was a chance of, but I’m assuming he meant a 50% chance of making it worse or hurting the healing process.

I just wanna walk!

He decided we could “compromise” and keep the cast on for 2 more weeks with a cast shoe, then move to the boot. Mother clucker. That means I have 2 more weeks of a sweaty, hairy leg; 2 more weeks of crutching around in the middle of the night; 2 more weeks of taking twice as long to do nothing tasks; 2 more weeks of getting worn out by what used to be a regular day; etc.

You never know how much you take the little things for granted when you just can’t do them as well anymore!

I am really glad it’s finally Friday, though. This weekend should be pretty busy. We’ve got plans to clean and workout and visit friends and see the new Superman movie. I hope it doesn’t go by too quickly!

Have a fantastic Friday and a wonderful weekend.

Women want to be thin and voluptuous at the same time. We want long legs, and we “need” the ever-coveted thigh gap. Men need to be muscular and have a body fat percentage below 10%. Only six-pack abs allowed!

Seriously, society?

Since starting CrossFit, though, I’ve noticed a definite 180* turnaround in the way I view “body image.” My focus isn’t on being supermodel thin–it’s a focus on health and strength and seeing my body achieve what I never thought it could. I’m about to tell you something that I never thought I’d hear myself say in my lifetime.

CrossFit is the only place where I’ve not been “proud” by how little I weigh. 

At CrossFit, what I’ve found important is building muscle, working to get stronger and faster, and eating to fuel your body, not losing pounds and looking thin.

One morning long before I broke my leg, my 5:15am class was working on dead lifts. I was still pretty new and struggling with the concept of “fighting for a lift.” In every other weight lifting class I’d ever taken, you were supposed to chose a weight you knew you could lift over and over–because you were going to be doing it for a long time, repeatedly.

In CrossFit, you work to get the highest weight you can for 5 reps, 3 reps, and even just 1 rep. This means you’re lifting heavier–but for much shorter periods of time.

Back to dead lifts. A CrossFit friend of mine who is always super encouraging, was rooting for me to try more weight since I always let myself off easy. So, for this class my goal was to dead lift at least my body weight. I got up to around 5# over my body weight, and it wasn’t that hard. When I told her my goal, she said something like, “Good job, but I know you can do more! You’re stronger than you think you are.”

For some reason, the concept of “numbers on a scale” struck me instantly, and I realized that the pounds I’m lifting and the times my workouts take are far more important numbers than the ones on the scale. I also realized that if my *important* numbers are going to get better, the numbers on the scale will also go up as I build more muscle.

And I’m ok with that.

Sure, I still want my clothes to fit (because I’m not buying new ones–see my New Year’s resolution), but I’m not worried about whether I’m at the lowest weight I can be or the thinnest I can be. Heck, I’ve even come to appreciate all my legs can do for me–even if they are thick!

It’s been almost a month since the soccer game that broke my leg and tore some of my ankle ligaments. While I’m really excited to be able to take care of myself now, there are elements of getting the cast off that, I’ll admit, I’m not looking forward to.

Even though I’ve managed to stay pretty active (after being cleared for exercise a week and a half after the incident), I’m not looking for to the “starting over” that will come with recovering from a broken leg. I haven’t run (obviously) since the night it happened. I haven’t done any weight-bearing exercise on both legs at the same time (though my right leg should be mega-strong on it’s own now). 

I’m really not looking forward to the “moving backward” feeling that I’m sure will come from this injury. When you’re working toward a goal and making progress, it’s easy to want to continue in your training and working out–because you can see that you’re hard work is worth something. When something stops your progress or makes you go backward, it’s hard to keep up the motivation. And I always fall in the emotional trap of, “I’ve done this before! Why can’t I do it now?!” even when I’m just having an off day or a bad run. So, I’m trying to prepare myself mentally for what’s to come when I get this cast off.

To add to that, in the past few days, I’ve really started to notice the loss of muscle in my left leg (maybe it’s just in my head?). I know that’s not a big deal, and that I can work to gain it back. But if there’s one thing that ticks me off more than anything else, it’s wasted time. And I feel like all the progress I made in CrossFit, running, soccer, etc. before this injury is wasted time since I have to “start all over.”

Who knew I’d miss my thunder thighs?

So, I’m going to start a progress element to my blog (mostly for me), tracking how I build back up and exceed what I’d done before–even after a broken leg and torn ankle ligaments. I’ll start as soon as I get this puppy off! I know I won’t be able to go straight back to all that I did before, but I can work with what I am doing to prove to myself that I am making progress in getting stronger and faster and healthier.

Happy Tuesday!